“It’s been bearing some fruit and helping us out and making us feel more confident going into the race weekends,” Earnhardt told reporters Friday. “We went to the simulator, picked a few things we liked, threw out some stuff that didn’t work.”

“We know what not to mess with that is going to waste a lot of practice time, and we can just hit the things that we thought we liked in the sim,” Earnhardt said.

Earnhardt was pleased with how the process played out in Friday’s practice and qualifying.

“They correlated really well today (in Friday’s practice). We got the car better in race trim. We only made one change and then swapped over really quick (to qualifying trim). Then for qualifying, we improved the car each run … I’m really happy.”

Earnhardt’s tweets on Friday and Saturday expressed optimism about qualifying and practice for Sunday’s race.

Decent qualifying today. P11. I think we had a little more speed earlier in the day but as the rounds went we got tighter. It’ll do.